Archive for the ‘Book Releases’ Category

Mentally Unstable is an anthology of 21 twisted mystery stories by Jennifer DiCamillo published by Under The Moon Press. It’s bloody messed up, that’s what it is. You should hunt it down and kill it–with a quick read. The mysteries range from cozy to hardboiled, from funny to deadly serious. And then there’s a weird psycho tale or two thrown in to keep the thing completely off balance.

Jackie King loves books, words, and writing tall tales. She especially enjoys murdering the people she dislikes on paper. King is a full time writer who sometimes teaches writing at Tulsa Community College. Her latest novel, THE INCONVENIENT CORPSE is a traditional mystery. King has also written five novellas as co-author of the Foxy Hens Series. Warm Love on Cold Streets is her latest novella and is included in the anthology THE FOXY HENS MEET A ROMANTIC ADVENTURER. Her only nonfiction book is DEVOTED TO COOKING. She is a member of Sisters in Crime, Mystery Writers of America, Romance Writers of America, Oklahoma Writers Federation, and Tulsa Night Writers.

I’d love to have readers ‘friend’ me on Facebook. I’m listed as Jacqueline King

Jennifer Di Camillo interviews Jackie King:

JENN: Tell us about yourself.

JACKIE KING: My name is Jackie King and I’m a full time writer living in Tulsa. Before Statehood, my grandparents drove a wagon down from Arkansas and settled in the part of Oklahoma once called No Man’s Land. Grandpa was in his early twenties and Grandma in her late teens. They brought two small girls, Lena and Delia (my mother). Altogether they reared 10 children. I’ve always been proud of my pioneer roots.

JENN: What do you write?

JACKIE KING: I write mysteries and romance, and have also published one nonfiction book titled DEVOTED TO COOKING. I have five novellas published in a series of anthologies. The first anthology was CHIK~LIT FOR FOXY HENS, and my novella is titled FLIRTING AT FIFTY, and is based on my unexpected divorce.

THE INCONVENIENT CORPSE is a mystery featuring a woman named Grace Cassidy. Her adventure starts when she finds a naked corpse in her B&B bed, finds that she has lost every penny she had in the world, and encounters some zany characters straight from the Mad Hatter’s tea party. A former socialite, she strives to keep her poise even when suspected of murder.

JENN: What does your work space look like?

JACKIE KING: My office looks as if someone set off a bomb in a paper mill. Some folks work best with files and some work best with piles. Unfortunately, I seem to be a “pile” person. Tidiness, alas, has never been one of my virtues. I comfort myself by saying, “If I took the time to clean my office, I’d never get around to writing.” This sounds pompous enough to silence those who might disapprove. And in my own defense, I will say that the rest of my house is reasonably neat. There’s only enough clutter (in my opinion) to make it homey.

JENN: When do you generally write? Do you have a regimen?

JACKIE KING: I do my best work in the morning. However, life sometimes interferes with my schedule and when that happens, I write in the afternoon or in the evening.

JENN: How do you write? Do you outline? Or fly by the seat of your pants? Do you like silence or rock out to a certain soundtrack?

JACKIE KING: I begin a new project by making as many notes as possible, usually on index cards. I keep these in a small box and shuffle through them from time to time. I also keep some ideas in a notebook and some on my computer. In other words, I’m all over the place. I always try to outline and sketch out what I can of my plot, but I seldom follow what I started with. Mostly, I write by the ‘seat of my pants.’

JENN: What is your current Work in Progress?

JACKIE KING: I’m almost finished with the first draft of the second Grace Cassidy mystery, titled SKELETON IN THE CLOSET. Currently I’m in that state of madness where I’m considering murdering all of my characters out of pure frustration. I always go thought this and I know that eventually the story will straighten itself out. I hope to have the book finished by fall 2011.

JENN: Do you have any deep dark secrets you’d like to share? Wanna tell us where you hang your hat or pantyhose or something?

JACKIE KING: Any secrets I’ve had, have probably shown up in one of my stories. There are plenty of things that no one knows about me, but they’re very dull. One of my oddities that I think I’ll give to my character Grace Cassidy, is that I use pig’s Lard for night cream. I do this because I’m allergic to everything else. I’m going to have Grace use it because she’s too broke to buy cosmetics and she can swipe the lard from her boss, Wilbur Wimberly.

JENN: Any final thoughts you have for us?

JACKIE KING: I’d like to thank you, Jennifer, for inviting me to be a guest on your blog.

SHARON: Thanks, Jennifer, for allowing me to share a valuable lesson I learned in a critique group.

THE LESSON:

CHARACTERS AND CRITICISM

In old cowboy movies, the good guys wore white hats, the bad guys, black. Heroes smiled, villains didn’t. It was easy to tell who was who. Regular human beings are not so easy to evaluate, so neither should characters be.

At one time a disgusted district attorney answered my oft-repeated complaint by ordering me––a newspaper reporter––to tell him if and when I ever met one of the alleged criminals filtering through his office who I thought was guilty.

One day, it happened. The scowling guy’s hairline was low over his forehead, almost to his eyebrows. He sat sullen in his shackles (bound wrists and ankles), and would neither look at nor speak to me, the only other person in the room. I was studying him when, to my surprise, his shoulders began to shake and crocodile tears leaked down his unshaven face. “My daddy said someday they’d find me dead in some alley behind some bar,” he muttered.

When he looked up at me, that low forehead sported a big knot, and an angry line of stitches.

“My best friend hit me over the head with a two-by-four,” he said. “I was nearly dead already before he shot me.”

With that he dissolved into noisy sobs. I walked out and left him alone with his grief.

The point is: even bad guys can arouse sympathy sometimes. And the good ones can transgress. If people behave that way, believable characters probably should, too.

Years ago, I was pretty pleased with my work in progress. Everybody in my Texas critique group said they loved it…except Randy. A grown man, Randy pointed his index finger at his tonsils and pretended to gag every time it was my turn to read. I assumed the usual: Randy was “eat up with jealousy.”

FLAWS? Flaws? If my heroine’s being perfect was what annoyed him, I could fix that. I am no stranger to imperfections. Easy-peasy.

It didn’t take much to alter her. I made her a little untidy, and sometimes irritatingly sure of herself. With tiny changes, I made her astute powers of observation annoying, especially when she bragged. On the other hand, I gave her no clue as to what her unusual discoveries meant.

The hero got some revising, too. He got natty about his clothing, and began being perpetually late. Although he could arrange clues into meaningful forms, he missed obvious details, not good for a cop.

With the changes, Randy became tolerant. Not only that, others in the group liked the characters better, too. Randy and the group weren’t the only ones. Already satisfied with my little fictional family, I got positively revved.

No more good guys pompously parading in their white hats through my prose. No more unsubtle evildoers.

My favorite characters now have warts and my bad guys display an occasional halo. I enjoy them all more for their unique, sometimes surprising foibles. And my readers do, too.

About SHARON ERVIN

The once-perfect Jancy Dewhurst is the now-flawed protagonist in all three of Sharon Ervin’s hardcover mystery series from Five Star/Cengage: THE RIBBON MURDERS, MURDER ABOARD THE CHOCTAW GAMBLER, and CANDLESTICKS.

Sooner born, Ervin has a degree in journalism from the University of Oklahoma. Once a newspaper reporter, she now works in her husband and son’s law office half-days, gleaning material and characters for more novels. She is married to McAlester, Oklahoma attorney Bill Ervin and has four grown children.

Pat Browning was born and raised in Oklahoma. A longtime resident of California’s San Joaquin Valley before moving back to Oklahoma in 2005, Pat’s professional writing credits go back to the 1960s, when she was a stringer for The Fresno Bee while working full time in a Hanford law office.

She is a veteran traveler. Her globe-trotting in the 1970s led her into the travel business, first as a travel agent, then as a correspondent for Travel Age West, a trade journal published inSan Francisco. In the 1990s, she signed on fulltime as a newspaper reporter and columnist, first at The Selma Enterprise and then at The Hanford Sentinel.

At the Enterprise, her lifestyle coverage placed first two years in a row in the California Newspaper Publishers Association Better Newspapers Contest. She was also a co-finalist for the 1993 George F. Gruner Award for Meritorious Public Service in Journalism. The award was for a story she and a colleague wrote about AIDS, which was a recent phenomenon at the time. At the Sentinel, her feature story on the Japanese-American “Yankee Samurais” of World War II, placed second in the CNPA contest.

Her first mystery, FULL CIRCLE, was set in a fictional version of Hanford, and published through iUniverse in 2001. It was revised and reissued as ABSINTHE 0F MALICE by Krill Press in 2008. An extensive excerpt can be read at Google Books —

The second book in the series, METAPHOR FOR MURDER, is a work in progress.

WHITE PETUNIAS, Pat’s nostalgic essay about growing up in Oklahoma, appeared last winter in the RED DIRT BOOK FESTIVAL ANTHOLOGY. An earlier version won second place in its category in Frontiers in Writing 2007, sponsored by Panhandle Professional Writers, Amarillo, Texas. WHITE PETUNIAS can be read on her blog, Morning’s At Noon – http://pbrowning.blogspot.com/2009_04_01_archive.html.

When you click on the URL, the first thing to appear is Pat’s review of the late Kirk Bjornsgaard’s novel, CONFESSIONS OF A FORMER ROCK QUEEN. Take a minute to read it. This stunning novel revisits the 1960s in the beguiling story of a young farm girl who wants more than anything to get out of Oklahoma and make it big in the New York music world. WHITE PETUNIAS follows, so scroll on down.

Pat’s articles on the writing life have appeared in The SouthWest Sage, the monthly journal of SouthWest Writers, based in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

About me: I was a reporter, feature writer, columnist, and sometimes all three, part time, full time, off and on for about 40 years. I miss it. It kept me involved with interesting people — and everyone is interesting. You just have to ask the right questions. I’m still fascinated by the way people decide to trust you and then just open up their mouths and tell you the most incredible stories.

I’ve done some news features in the past few years, mostly as favors — not that I would have turned down money. The conversation usually went, “We’d love to have you write (fill in the blank) but we can’t pay you anything.” I was never surprised. Small-town newspapers are notoriously poor and/or stingy. But I love ’em, I really do. As with the Eye of God, not a sparrow falls without their knowing it. I could never have set my first mystery anywhere else except in a very small town, with a middle-aged reporter as the protagonist. All those secrets to ferret out – so lovely!

How hard can it be? That’s what I said when I decided to write a murder mystery. File it under “Famous Last Words.” Here’s my inspirational story — inspirational in that it may inspire someone to take up another line of work.

Seriously, it’s been the experience of a lifetime. I wouldn’t trade it for a bucket of gold dust. Here’s how it all began.

Like half the people on the planet, I grew up planning to write a novel “someday.” That day arrived almost accidentally, except that I don’t believe in accidents.

I was working for The Hanford (California) Sentinel, and the managing editor suggested that I write a book column. I went to the library and walked along the shelves pulling out books that looked interesting. Most of them turned out to be mysteries. After a few weeks I decided to write my own. I actually said, “How hard can it be?”

That was about 1995, and five years later I could have written a book on just how hard it is. Through it all I was taking online writing classes, asking questions in chat rooms, lurking on listservs, trying to learn everything I could in the shortest possible time.

FULL CIRCLE, my first mystery, has had as many lives as a cat, with different titles, different characters, different plots and subplots. I think I ended up with nine or ten “final drafts,” each time thinking that I finally got it right. Eventually I had to say, “Stick a fork in it, it’s done.”

I spent about a year writing a few query letters and talking to a couple of agents and editors, but I’m too long in the tooth to spare that kind of time. I had been checking out the new print-on-demand technology via the Internet, and iUniverse seemed to be the best game in town. Not only that, I could publish for $99. It was quick, and I liked the idea of total control over my book.

I found Ariana Overton on the Internet, and she designed a beautiful cover for $100. I own it. Best $100 I ever spent. So, I formatted and uploaded my book about July of 2001, and by the end of August the finished product was in my hands.

A major factor in my decision to go that route was my husband’s health. I had given up the newspaper job to be at home with him. So there I was, sitting at the computer for hours at a time, days on end. He was patient, interested, supportive. He kept saying, “When are you going to let me read that book?” Once I decided I’d taken it as far as I could, I let him read the manuscript, and then I contacted iUniverse.

He was so proud of that book that he told everybody he met about it. I don’t know whether he generated any sales, but it gave him such a kick to talk about it. I never regretted publishing it myself. It was a gift to both of us.

Even after it was published I couldn’t tell people what it was about because I honestly didn’t know. But after I heard enough questions and did enough presentations to figure out what I had written — well, here’s the log line: “Discovery of a skeleton in a cotton field leads to murder – and romance.” Someone, and I’ve forgotten who, called it “a study in small-town secrets.” I like that.

I had a good start on my second book when my husband died and everything just stopped. It’s such a long, long story. Maybe several long, long stories, fodder for a book or two. It’s a terrible experience to sit in a hospital room and watch someone you love slip away from you, and know there is nothing you can do to hold them here. I’ve done that twice, and the second time was worse than the first. You’d think you’d get used to it. You don’t. Another piece of your heart breaks. You can fall on the floor, or you can get up and go home.

As if that weren’t enough I was diagnosed with breast cancer, had a lumpectomy and went through six weeks of radiation. With no children and no family left in California, I decided to come “home” to Oklahoma, where I have sisters and a brother and many nieces and nephews.

The move would have killed me if I weren’t part mule. I left everything I owned, not to mention almost 50 years of my life, in California. I was so exhausted, physically as well as emotionally, that I walked with a cane my first two weeks here. I was like some old crone straggling out of a cave, leaning on her cane, blinking in the light.

It’s now six years later – six years of cultural (and financial) adjustment and learning to live alone (I hate it) — and I still haven’t finished that second book. The good news is that I have picked it up again. Working title: METAPHOR FOR MURDER.

Even better news is that the original book and I are both coping with a ninth life. Krill Press, a small, new press picked up FULL CIRCLE, changed the title to ABSINTHE OF MALICE, changed the cover and asked for a couple of small revisions. The new book hasn’t done much as a print book but it took off like a house afire as an e-book on Kindle. Sometimes it takes a while for a book to find its audience.

As I write this I have TV on for company. I’m watching the Masters Golf Tournament in Atlanta. I’m watching disaster news on ABC. It’s a reminder that there’s a real world out there, so why get worked up over a piece of fiction?

I keep remembering something Sue Grafton said at Sisters in Crime conference in Boise,Idaho a few years ago. She was listing her 10 standard reactions to a manuscript rejection, but one of them is really useful for more than a rejected manuscript. She said: “The free world does not hang in the balance. You are only writing a book.”

I also remember something the late Kurt Vonnegut (author of SLAUGHTERHOUSE FIVE) said a few years ago during an interview on PBS. He said that when we’ve destroyed the last living thing on earth, it would be poetic justice if the earth sent up a message: “It’s done. People didn’t like it here.”

And then he added, “We are here on earth to fart around. What the computer people don’t realize is that we are dancing animals.”

Maybe he’s right. Maybe we should spend less time at the computer and more time dancing. Why not? I think I’ll start tomorrow. It might do wonders for my shape, and anything would be an improvement. From the side I look like Alfred Hitchcock.

Raven Morressey is living the good life. Nice home, husband, three healthy children, and it’s finally summertime, when life is again lovely in Valdez,
Alaska. All this explodes one morning when builders, digging up her back yard, uncover a recently murdered headless, handless female body covered with scarification—hundreds of colored designs cut into the skin to resemble tattoos. As if this isn’t enough, where the corpse’s head should have been is a large rock with a face painted on that resembles an Alaska Native mask.

Raven’s eight year old son, Timmy, is the first one to see the body and is suddenly unable to walk or respond in any way. On that same day, Raven hears the voice of her long dead Athabascan father coming from Timmy, who is unaware of the ancient hunting chants he sings in his sleep and the words he suddenly speaks in Raven’s native tongue—a language he does not know.

Jack O’Banion, Valdez’s Chief of Police for the past few years, faced with his first murder case in Valdez, begins his official investigation. Everywhere he goes he finds nothing but deception. The town seems to have closed into itself and nobody will tell him anything that might help him solve this case. Then one murder quickly morphs into two, then three, and the Alaska State Troopers are hot on his back to find the killer now.

Between Raven’s voices and the visions she develops, and Jack, whose career as well as his contented life in Valdez are on the line, they both feel they have to find the killer and restore some sanity to the town—not to mention their own lives, which are quickly unraveling out of control.

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Author Bio

Beth Anderson is a multi-published, award winning author in several genres including romance and mainstream crime fiction. A full time author, she lives in a Chicago, Illinois suburb. She has appeared on Chicago’s WGN Morning Show, The ABC Evening News, as well as numerous other radio and cable television shows. She has guest lectured at Purdue University and many libraries and writers’ conferences. She loves music, particularly jazz. Her website and blog are both at http://www.bethanderson-hotclue.com

Question: How do you write? Do you outline? Or fly by the seat of your
pants? Do you like silence or rock out to a certain soundtrack?

I do a lot of background research and full lead character bios from childhood up to the time the story starts. Then, when I’m ready, I start writing, getting a feel for the characters and the story. This is where I do my most re-writing. I’ll go along for three or four chapters, then I’ll start outlining the rest of the book, but that’s a very sketchy process for me. I’ll write it all out on paper, then transfer scenes onto little cards so I can move them around if I have to, and then work on a card per chapter.

My books always seem to wind up around 90,000 words or a little under. It’s just the right length for me and I seem to instinctively wind up at The End right about where I’m supposed to, word-wise. My stories have a lot of subplots in them, which you would have to have for a book that length that moves very fast. I do edit chapters as I go along, then re-edit them as many times as I have to. I know a lot of writers don’t do that, but that’s how I learned and that’s the way I stay in my personal comfort zone.

I rarely have to do full rewrites because of that, because I know where the book begins and where it’s going to end ahead of time. Even starting out, I know whodunnit, although I have changed that as I go along, depending on how the story evolves. But it usually evolves as I want it to. I don’t let my characters take over the book, especially secondary characters. It’s all in clearly knowing what you want to happen at the end, and what the leads’ problems are before you begin. By that I mean what they want. Then I work out how they go about getting it, which leads to the end.

I work in dead silence and in a darkened room as much as possible. The only distractions I want are my dog and my two cats if they need something
crucial, like treats. I have a sign on my door that says, “If you’re not bleeding, don’t come in.” Sounds like a mystery writer? Well, yes, that’s what I am.

Question: Got anything to brag about? (Awards? Upcoming releases?)

With my previous books with an online publisher, I’ve had a lot of smaller awards, which meant a whole lot to me. They’re all listed on my website’s
various book pages. My first three NY books were Count on Me, a Harlequin Superromance, All That Glitters, from Ballantine’s Fortunes label, and
Diamonds, Dorchester/Ivy. At that time, early to mid nineties, internet publishing was unheard of and we didn’t focus so much on getting Internet
awards. Everything was done for us, even promotion by the publishers in some cases. After a few years of not writing much at all because of personal problems, the publishing world was beginning its upheaval which is in full bloom now, and I moved on eventually to Amber Quill, published three books with them and started learning the POD/e-book routine. Yes, I was there at the very beginning. That’s where all the awards came from, and I love everyone of them because clearly, someone at all those places on the Internet loved my books.

My new release is RAVEN TALKS BACK from Krill Press, which focuses entirely on mysteries. It’s available in Kindle and Nook and print at Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.com and in bookstores.

Question: Any cool stories about meeting other writers or industry professionals that have influenced or helped you? We like to hear the silly
stuff. Ever stutter at an agent? (I have.) Ever sidestep an editor? Or have a margarita downing contest with one? (Pleading the fifth on that, myself.)

Yes. I can tell you about the single person who helped me the most, and for the life of me I can’t remember her name because I hated her, LOL! I had been working on my own for a few years, maybe four or five, trying to learn how to put a book together in readable form, which always looks so easy to the unpublished person while she’s reading a book.

I finally got to the point where I felt I was ready to start going to conferences. My first conferences were RWA even though I already pretty much knew my real love was going to be mystery. So, I sat down with this agent at a St. Louis conference, expecting her to fall over dead with delight at my brilliant prose and dialogue, and started my five minutes with her. She lifted my three chapters, flipped through it, her eyes barely hitting the pages and flung them back at me. “Your dialogue is horrible,” she said.

In my defense, she was famous for doing things like that and eventually got out of the business. However, I did take it to heart. I started focusing on
my dialogue, went back to the mat and learned how to do it naturally, and in doing so, developed my voice. When I submitted to Harlequin Superromance, although it took an ungodly long time for it to go though their channels, I had the head editor (at the time) on my side because, she said, “My writing was strong and clean and my dialogue was wonderful, fast and easy to read.” I had found my voice.

So an agent, whose apparently sole intent was to send me crying out of the room, succeeded only in my ultimately nabbing a contract, and my career was launched.

Moral of this story: Don’t cry in front of them. Take it like a professional and if you’re lucky enough to get ANY feedback, take it to heart and start working on the weak spots because they might become your strong spots. In other words, if you are having rejections and you think you don’t have any weak spots, take another look. We all have weak spots at the beginning.

Thank you, Jennifer, for allowing me to post on your blog today! Onward and upward, all of us!

Anne’s bio: Anne K. Albert has taught high school art, sold display advertising for a small town weekly newspaper, and worked for a national brand water company, but now writes full time.

A member of the Romance Writers of America, Mystery Writers of America, Sisters in Crime, and married to her high school sweetheart for more than a quarter of a century, it’s a given she’d write mystery and romantic suspense.

When not in her home office, she enjoys traveling, visiting friends and family, knitting, crocheting, and of course, reading.

Jennifer – What do you write?

Anne – I write stories chill the spine, warm the heart and soothe the soul – all with a delightful touch of humor.

Jennifer – Where do you live, and what does your work space look like?

Anne – I live in a part of the country that has four very distinct seasons, but for as long as I can remember I’ve always longed to be a bird and fly south each fall! Spending the winter months in a warmer climate is number one on my bucket list.

As for my home office, well, in my mind it’s organized confusion. I lie to myself daily and assure myself I know exactly where every thing is. Most everyone else, however, would simply call it a mess!

Jennifer – When do you generally write? Do you have a regimen?

Anne – Regimen? I wish! Since becoming published, I’m amazed how much time is spent on self promotion and marketing. I try to limit that task to mornings, but I’m not always successful. Actual writing time is done in the afternoon, with time off for dinner, followed by another session each evening.

Jennifer – How do you write? Do you outline? Or fly by the seat of your pants? Do you like silence or rock out to a certain soundtrack?

Anne –I work in complete silence, and I’m very much a pantser.

It took me a very long time to accept this process. I wanted to find an easier way to write. I tried outlining. Even did it for two manuscripts. I included loads of details, twists and turns, but when it came time to write those stories, I couldn’t get into it. It took years for me to figure out why. The answer? I already knew how it would end! Where’s the fun in that? I realized I’m my first reader. I write to find out what happens next.

Jennifer – Tell us about your book. What was it? When did it come out? Got any awards to brag about?

Anne – FRANK, INCENSEANDMURIEL is set the week before Christmas when the stress of the holidays is enough to frazzle anyone’s nerves. Tensions increase when a close friend begs Muriel to team up with a sexy private investigator to find a missing woman. Forced to deal with an embezzler, kidnapper, and femme fatale is bad enough, but add Muriel’s zany yet loveable family to the mix and their desire to win the D-DAY(Death Defying Act of the Year) Award, and the situation can only get worse.

It received a 5-star review and Reviewer Top Pick from Night Owl Reviews. Reviewer Diana Coyle said, “This is one of the best romantic suspense stories I’ve read for 2010. Ms. Albert has a way of telling a story that pulls you in from the very first sentence and holds your attention to the very last line. Her voice is melodic and her writing style is refreshing. This author knows how to entertain readers and keeps them wanting to turn the page to see what happens next. If you’re looking for a story with a little bit of humor, a whole lot of suspense and plenty of insanity, then you’ve found the perfect story.”

If they drop by my Muriel Reeves Mysteries blog http://muriel-reeves-mysteries.blogspot.com and leave a comment mentioning this interview, I’ll enter their name in a draw to win a pdf copy of FRANK, INCENSEAND MURIEL. I’ll announce the winner at the conclusion of the tour, sometime during the week ofAugust 22, 2011.

Who are you? I’m Vivian Zabel, who writes under the names Vivian Gilbert Zabel (because there are more Vivian Zabels, and one is in prison) and V. Gilbert Zabel. I’m married to the man of my life, and have been for over 49 years. We have three living children, 10 grandchildren, and 5 great-grandchildren so far.

What do you write? I write about life, mystery, and love, often at least a little of each in every work. My first love is mystery, and I have some straight mystery novels. Stolen includes mystery and suspense, but it’s more a tragedy.

My writings come to me without any searching on my part. Poetry or plot ideas awaken me and won’t allow me to go back to sleep until I get up and write them down – that’s why a pad and pen are by my bed.

I’ve written professionally since in my 20s. However, until I retired from teaching 10 years ago, I had only poetry, short stories, and articles published. Since retirement, I’ve collaborated with a book of poetry and a book of short stories. I have 5 other books out by me, all by myself.

Where do you live, and what does your work space look like?I live in the central part of Oklahoma. I turned a small bedroom into an office, and it’s full of computer, printers, file cabinets, and books everywhere.

When do you generally write? Do you have a regimen? I write some every day. Since I’m also the head of a small publishing company (a traditional one, not one that charges authors to produce a book), I don’t have much time to write as I’d wish.

How do you write? Do you outline? Or fly by the seat of your pants? Do you like silence or rock out to a certain soundtrack? Before I put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard, the story is running like a movie in my head. Sometimes I like silence; others the TV may be providing background noise. During the Christmas season, I have carols playing.

Got anything to brag about? (Awards? Upcoming releases?) Stolen hasn’t won any awards, at least yet, but my mystery/suspense novel Midnight Hours has won a couple.

What are you working on at the moment? Tell us what it is and why you think it’s gonna be a “gotta have” k? One thing I’m working on is the sequel to Stolen, titled Betrayed. What happens if and when abducted children return home to discover that life didn’t stand still while they were gone?

Tell us how to find you and your stuff. (All your website and blog links)

I am very proud of an upcoming release because it is my tribute to veterans and their families. It’s a poetry book titled PASSING PATRIOTS of War and Peace. It will sell at Gregath Publishing. I won the publishing contract in a gift basket. Which brings me to a point of my faith in the law of attraction. When you’re following intuition, or divine direction, or whatever you want to call it, you can produce something astounding and the universe (or God) will see a way to bring your efforts to the public. If that’s where it’s meant to be seen, anyway.

Even if you aren’t into poetry, please go and google gregath publishing company and look for this book. I think the poetry is easy to read, and some of it is really heart wrenching. Others are quick little ditties. But overall it is a solid collection of pieces giving tribute to our troops, veterans, and their families.